Meta’s new terms may allow it to train AI on news sites

Meta's new terms appear to give it permission to crawl and scrape websites "associated" with the businesses that use its platforms – including online publishers, according to a report from Nieman Lab. The new terms, which go into effect on October 30th, say Meta can use this outside content to "develop, improve, research," and "train" […]. AI News Meta’s new terms may allow it to train AI on news sites for free The new policy allows Meta to crawl all websites ‘associated’ with a business account.

The new policy allows Meta to crawl all websites ‘associated’ with a business account. The new policy applies to business accounts that promote their content across Facebook, Instagram, WhatsApp, and Messenger. As pointed out by Nieman Lab, these terms seem to allow Meta to bypass a licensing agreement and train its AI models on content posted by online publishers.

Meta has followed OpenAI in striking AI licensing deals with CNN, Fox News, USA Today, and People Inc., but these terms could give the company access to a much broader swath of content: You authorize us (or any entity acting on our behalf) to use automated software (such as web scrapers, bots, robots, spiders, crawlers, and user agents) and create test credentials to access, index, cache, analyze, collect, retrieve, or crawl the domains, web pages, or URLs (and any content available through them) that are associated with your products or services, or that are made available through your or users’ use of Meta Company Products and services, and to periodically pull updates from such domains, web pages, or URLs. Meta may use any content from such domains, web pages, or URLs to provide, develop, improve, research, train, and maintain the integrity of, the Meta Company Products, services, and features provided under these Commercial Terms and any other applicable supplemental terms. Businesses that don’t agree to Meta’s new policies “may stop all access or use of our Products for business or commercial purposes,” the terms say.

Last month, Meta launched a new Meta One subscription that requires businesses and creators to pay to include links in posts and reels. “Put another way, Meta has begun charging users to post links to the same content that it will be permitted to crawl for free,” Nieman Lab says. Meta didn’t immediately respond to The Verge ’s request for comment.

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Meta’s new terms appear to give it permission to crawl and scrape websites “associated” with the businesses that use its platforms — including online publishers, according to a report from Nieman Lab.

The new terms, which go into effect on October 30th, say Meta can use this outside content to “develop, improve, research,” and “train” its AI products.